The invention relates to a rail vehicle which has at least one truck with two wheel units hingedly coupled to each other.
Both rail traction vehicles and also carriages of the named kind consist essentially of a vehicle body which is built up on one or more bogies and is carried by the latter. The wheelsets or axle units are built into the frame of the bogie. The wheelsets are mutually movably arranged in some of these bogies in order to improve the characteristics when travelling around curves.
Independently of whether one is concerned with simple running wheelsets or with driving wheelsets driven by motors, the wheelset units have hitherto been arranged in a frame construction on which the vehicle body is resiliently supported. Such trucks with so-called nose suspension units which are journalled in a frame and pivotable with respect to each other are known and their function is for example described in detail in EP-A1-0 420 801.
Such bogies or trucks with the traditional frame construction are relatively complicated, expensive and heavy, in particular from the point of view of fabrication. The design is particularly complicated for rail vehicles for permanent ways and rail networks with relatively small radii of curvature, since the relatively short spring stages between the wheelset units and the frame construction must accommodate large relative movements in the horizontal plane with radial adjustment of the wheelset units.